WOW – Word – vonda drees art

Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? –Jeremiah 8:22

“Jeremiah is saying actually, ‘There must be a balm in Gilead; it cannot be that there is no balm in Gilead.’ . . . The slave caught the mood of this spiritual dilemma and with it did an amazing thing. He straightened the question mark in Jeremiah’s sentence into an exclamation point: ‘There is a balm in Gilead!’ Here is a note of creative triumph.” —Howard Thurman, Deep River and The Negro Spiritual Speaks of Life and Death

Welcome to Day 7 of the Wonders of Worship (WOW) series. Today we ponder the Word.

While working on this painting of cottonwood branches, I learned about and reflected on the healing powers of the bud’s resin. Cottonwood salve is also referred to as Balm of Gilead.

Ways to Engage:

Practice Visio Divina (receive, reflect, respond, rest) with the painting.
Download the B&W image. Color it on your own or with a friend. Color in silence or while listening to the podcast conversation with Elizabeth Schrader Polczer linked below. Let it inspire further contemplation/conversation.
You do you. Trust your intuition and engage in the way your heart desires.

A deep dive into the healing power and vulnerability of the Word:

“The more I saw in myself, the deeper I went into myself, the deeper I was able to go in John. It almost felt like the Gospel was showing a wound in the text to me. It felt like a very, almost tender invitation, saying well, let me show you this. . . . It felt like sort of an invitation saying, can you help?” – Elizabeth Schrader Polczer, in her interview with the Christian Century, In Search of Truth: The Bible and Mary Magdalene. I heartily recommend the whole conversation, especially if this is the first time you’re encountering Libby’s research. The part that drops my jaw happens between 32:40 – 38:43.

To download the black and white image for personal use: on a computer, click and drag the image to your desktop; on a phone, press on the picture until it gives you the option to save it to your photos. The image is formatted to fit on an 8.5″x11″ piece of paper, but feel free to print it whatever size you’d like.

Background: I created a series of forty 5″x7″ watercolor paintings inspired by the elements of worship. It was work commissioned by a project with Nourishing Vocation with Children at St. Olaf College, a program funded through Lilly Endowment’s Nurturing Children Through Worship and Prayer Initiative.

As the paintings are shared, you may notice a pattern: